Unprecedented employment tribunal service delays in England and Wales mean people bringing unfair dismissal claims are waiting up to five years for their case to be heard.<\/b><\/p>\n
Expert lawyers say there must now be radical change if there is to be justice for both claimants and the companies involved.<\/p>\n
One of those affected is Catriona Ball, whose husband Lewis died in 2024, weeks after he quit a job he believed had been making him ill.<\/p>\n
After his death, she lodged a claim at the Employment Tribunal for constructive unfair dismissal and an alleged failure to make reasonable adjustments for disability. His former employer is contesting the claim.<\/p>\n
This story is not about what went on between him and the company and who’s right or wrong – but how long it will take to resolve the case.<\/p>\n
Catriona filed the claim in February 2025, but the case will not come before a judge for a full hearing and judgment until 2029.<\/p>\n
For Catriona, the daily roller coaster of coping with the death of her husband has been worsened by the legal limbo she now finds herself in.<\/p>\n
Lewis died on 2 November 2024 aged 43.<\/p>\n
It began as just a normal Saturday at Aylestone St James, Lewis’s childhood rugby club, half an hour from where they lived with their two children near Kettering – and where he still played.<\/p>\n
“Part-way through the game, he came into the clubhouse, saying he had chest pains,” says Catriona.<\/p>\n
“He then went off to try and find aspirins at the far end of the clubhouse – and collapsed.”<\/p>\n
Everything was done to try to save Lewis – including using a defibrillator he had helped the club to secure.<\/p>\n
There was nothing anyone, including the paramedics, could do and he died at the scene.<\/p>\n
“It’s been horrific,” she says. “Grief is brutal. Every day is affected and you have to get through each day. You’ve got kids who need you. You have to just take it literally one day at a time.”<\/p>\n
Lewis died of coronary artery disease and hypertension.<\/p>\n
He had quit his work weeks earlier because he believed he was under intolerable stress that was not being taken seriously.<\/p>\n
Catriona says she will have to sell the family home in order to fund her tribunal case, because until it is completed she cannot settle her late husband’s estate. There’s virtually no legal aid for employment tribunals.<\/p>\n
“He was very loving and very family-oriented, very funny,” she says. “It’s hard. I don’t have much opportunity to think back about the positive things about him, because I’m stuck in this grief and managing legal issues.<\/p>\n
“I was told it would take a good few months, potentially a year, year and a half, but I never anticipated it to take as long as what it is now looking like it will take.<\/p>\n
“It’s shocking, absolutely shocking. It stops me getting closure and feeling like Lewis can rest in peace.”<\/p>\n
Catriona’s loss is exceptional – but the legal limbo she is experiencing is not.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The latest figures show that there is now a backlog of almost 72,000 claims before the Employment Tribunal – up almost 26,000 in a year.<\/p>\n
In practical terms, say expert lawyers in the field, unfair dismissal claims being lodged now may not go to a full court hearing for five years.<\/p>\n
That’s tens of thousands of lives on hold – and businesses that cannot put a case behind them either.<\/p>\n
The Employment Lawyers’ Association (ELA) is now calling on the government to take radical steps to turn around the enormous backlogs.<\/p>\n
“The system isn’t coping at the moment, and it’s only going to get worse in the future,” says Caspar Glynn KC, the chair of the ELA.<\/p>\n
“Normally in an employment tribunal, the worker has been dismissed, they have no income, they have nothing to live on, and a delay of five years is effectively economic servitude for that person.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n